Page 53 of The One Decent Thing

Sebastian nodded, and then shook his head, and then nodded again. “You open it?”

I reached out for the envelope, but he didn’t hand it to me, instead ripping the top open in one jerky motion. Okay, then. I sat back and waited as he pulled out a fresh newspaper, ink smeared a little from where it’d been stuffed into the envelope, folded over so that the top of the front page was showing.

Under the masthead, a giant two-line headline stretched all the way across: “Mayor’s Son Reveals Parents’ Role in Jailing Innocent Man.” I blinked at it for a few seconds, since the words were blurred. That was the fresh ink, of course. I wasn’t fucking crying.

Maybe I was crying a little. A very fucking little.

“Oh,” Sebastian gasped. “It’s real. It’s in the paper.”

“Can you read it to me?” My voice shook, and I quickly brushed a little moisture off my cheek with my wrist. My other hand was still gripping the back of his neck, and I had to consciously relax it a bit so I didn’t leave bruises. Sebastian didn’t complain. He just reached over and took the hand I’d been using to wipe my eyes, and held it. Our joined hands were damp with rain and tears and nervous sweat, and I’d never been so glad of anyone’s touch in my whole life.

“Yeah, I’ll read it to you, okay?” he said, so gently. And then he unfolded the newspaper and cleared his throat, leaning in and tipping the paper so that he could make it out in the feeble glow of the dome light.

Rain tap-tapped on the roof of the car, picking up force and speed, and the wind gusted by in a rush.

“Four years ago,” Sebastian read, “Aidan Morrison, at the time only nineteen, was dragged in handcuffs from his Carterville apartment and arrested for kidnapping. The alleged victim: Sebastian Peach, a seventeen-year-old high-school acquaintance who had earlier that night left home following a fight with his parents…”

As he read it to me, I lived it again in the worst possible way, and then some. The article described the way Sebastian had fought with the arresting officers, arguing and shouting and begging and telling them they had it all wrong. I’d missed most of that. I’d already been in the back of the squad car. But I could see it and hear it, the way Nissa wrote it, and it made my stomach heave. Sebastian must have gone into a lot of detail, so much more than he had with me. I knew he hadn’t wanted to hurt me by shutting me out of some of what he’d gone through, but hearing it now, in a stranger’s words but in his voice, made me feel like I was sitting in the car with someone I didn’t know at all.

Sebastian’s fingers stroking over my knuckles brought me back, and I looked down and focused on our hands twined together on my thigh. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know everythingabouthim. I knewhim.

The parts of the article covering the behind-the-scenes fuckery between the Peaches, the prosecutor, and their witnesses made me furious, rather than sick, but it was kind of fascinating. Sebastian had told Nissa the parts about his ‘treatment’ at the hands of that psychiatrist, and about the drugs he’d been put on, and he’d told her what he knew about his father’s golf buddy the DA.

But Nissa had clearly done her homework between the interview and writing the article, and she’d been thorough for such a quick turnaround. I hadn’t known about the campaign contributions the DA’s wife’s family had made to Sebastian’s mother, or about the two witnesses from our high school who were threatened with prosecution for minor drug crimes of their own if they didn’t testify against me. By the way Sebastian stumbled over those paragraphs and gripped my hand almost hard enough to break it, he hadn’t either.

The article closed with a quote from a recent statement put out by Sebastian’s mother’s campaign manager, who was currently organizing her boss’s bid for a seat in the State Assembly. “Mayor Peach is honored to have served as Carterville’s leader, and she’s ready to take the experience she’s gained here and utilize it in the state capitol, where she means to push for more protections for at-risk LGBT youth, among other goals. As the mother of a victim of a violent hate crime, she believes she is uniquely qualified to understand how vulnerable marginalized teenagers can be, and to look out for their interests at the state level.”

Nissa didn’t even bother ripping that steaming pile of hypocritical bullshit apart; she just left it there, the perfect coda to my story.

It was fucking amazing. If I hadn’t already been crazy about Sebastian, I’d have been in the lobby of theCarterville Heraldwith a bouquet of roses the next morning to try to get Nissa to marry me.

Fuck it. I’d send her flowers anyway, from both Sebastian and me.

“Holy crap,” Sebastian said. “Oh my God. I had no idea she was using me — using us — oh, my God.”

“Not anymore,” I said, and burst out laughing. “Not fucking anymore.”

Sebastian surged forward and kissed me hard, his mouth hot and demanding. “Home,” he gasped between kisses. “We have to get home. I need you inside me like,yesterday.”

“I was inside you yesterday,” I mumbled, his lips getting in my way. “But I’m not arguing.”

Sebastian had to let go of my hand to drive, and I had to let go of him, but we finally managed to tear ourselves apart. Distracting him on the road was a no-go, but my fingers were twitching with the urge to touch him by the time we pulled into the driveway, and I was painfully hard against the fly of my jeans.

We both dived out of the car and ran up the front steps, Sebastian muttering under his breath as he fumbled the rain-wet keys and got the door open. The way I was pressed up against his back, kissing his neck and groping his ass, probably didn’t help. He flung the damp newspaper onto the table by the door and then flung himself into my arms, already yanking at the hem of my shirt and shoving his shoes off with his feet.

He ended up flailing and nearly falling, landing hard against the wall by the table and pulling me with him. I grabbed his wrists and gently pulled his arms up over his head, pinning them there with one hand, and with the other I tipped his chin up.

I had him right where I wanted him, held firmly between my body weight and the wall, with my cock grinding against his stomach. I shoved a thigh between his legs. Sebastian was as hard as I was, and he moaned and squirmed, trying to get some friction.

One quick kiss, and I leaned back to look him in the eyes. “Turn around and face the wall, and then don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

His eyes rolled back in his head and his hips jerked. “Yes, please — no, wait, I haven’t —” He looked at me, wild-eyed. “I haven’t gotten ready, or anything. Um, I should probably…” He trailed off, biting his lip.

“We’ll take a shower together right after? I don’t care. If you’re uncomfortable, we don’t need to.” I mean, it was his ass, right? I knew what else that part of his body did, and it didn’t matter to me. At all. I could’ve drilled a hole in a wooden plank right then, and all I could think about was getting into the tight, perfect heat of him.

He hesitated. “Come right back?”

“Right back,” I promised, and kissed him one more time. And then once more, for good measure.

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